Has it been a rough go lately?

Yes, you still love each other, but your different personalities and ways of responding to life stressors have caused discord and distance. You’re caught in a bad cycle, perhaps one that’s new to you or one you know all too well. Either way, neither of you is treating the other thoughtfully or sensitively. Maybe you don’t talk like you used to and hardly know what’s going on in your partner’s outer or inner world. Maybe you’ve become roommates, or worse, enemies. Whether there are overt arguments or stony silences, you’re both in pain and feeling alone. You’re too worn down and worn out to try to fix things yourselves. Besides, you’ve tried before and it hasn’t worked. You just don’t know how to find your way back to feeling passionate, in love, and partnered again, much less how to sustain it. If you’re going to turn this around, you know you need professional help.

I help couples who are out of sync and disconnected build partnerships where they feel understood, supported, secure, attracted, and happy to be together.

The couples I see show up with challenges that stem from unhealthy and unchecked interpersonal dynamics, heavy external stressors, and unresolved past hurts. Most have not acknowledged, much less actively addressed, their problems for far too long, creating a backlog of resentment and pain. Some are living parallel lives with little to no authentic connection. Others end up engaging through conflict, having cyclical arguments that never get worked through or cleaned up. Many couples are dealing with mental health and substance use issues — in one or both partners — and lack the knowledge, skill, or patience to know how to navigate these without more collateral damage to the relationship. Crises with kids, other family members, and work are key stressors as are big changes like a recent move or the loss of a loved one. It’s also common for the couples I work with to struggle with different relational styles where one wants more emotional intimacy and the other needs space. Sometimes there is a fair amount of blame, mistrust, jealousy, control, and boundary violations due to personality issues or a past or recent affair. Most couples also have challenges around sex, where levels of desire are mismatched or there is a loss of sensuality, arousal, and shared sexuality. Without fail, all the couples I see have patterns of interacting that undermine the experience of emotional safety. Most couples know these patterns exist while others have blind spots that need to be illuminated and made available for change.

Most couples operate according to a similar set of non-conscious rules stemming from our primary need to feel safe, both physically and psychologically. I practice couples therapy with this in mind, getting to the heart of the matter quickly and setting you up for a healthier and happier relationship.

I’ll start by meeting with you together to identify where the problems exist and how they play out, hopefully gaining agreement on the goals for your work. Sometimes getting to consensus and more accurately understanding the scope of the issues requires individual meetings with each parter. Because the couple is the client, I only meet individually with partners at the beginning of treatment and when there are critical impasses. Once we have a solid idea of what needs to be addressed, I’ll recommend the type of therapy best suited to get results. That might mean starting with attachment-based interventions drawn from PACT (see below) to reduce aloneness or using a more systems-based approach like RLT (see below) to unwind cycles of unhelpful behaviors. It could also entail recommending adjunctive individual work for one or both partners to get support for depression, anxiety, or trauma. Based on the acuity of the problems, you may need extended weekly sessions or every other week standard sessions. Once things settle down and you’ve met many of your treatment goals, intermittent therapy is always an option where you can get a tune-up or address emergent issues as needed. As with any type of therapy I offer, you can expect me to regularly check in with you to make sure my methods are useful and you’re making progress.

How I can help.

• I’ll help you create an owner’s manual on your partner, where you actively and non-judgmentally track their responses to and attitudes about all manner of things, especially you. I’ll teach you the strategies to turn their owner’s manual into a living document, so you’re current on your partner and you have the knowledge to make them they feel important, valued, and loved. That knowledge will also allow you to more skillfully engage when tensions rise.

• I’ll teach you the principles of secure, functioning relationships based on pair-bonding and human attachment research. In sessions, I’ll direct interactions to assess your security status and then help you operate in ways that conform to pro-relationship principles or at least don’t violate them. I’ll also educate you on practices to employ outside of sessions to help you create more connection, build trust, and enhance attraction..

• I’ll help you understand and undo your problem patterns, which you may not be aware of but must be unpacked and altered to get back in sync as a couple. These can look like parent-child dynamics where one partner over-functions and makes demands while the other rebels and under-functions or back-and-forth accusations and defensiveness. Regardless of the specific pattern, once identified, I’ll coach you in making the changes necessary to get unstuck and move into more conscious, constructive interactions.

• I’ll help you find your mission as a couple where you dig into your collective core values and beliefs and begin to create a shared identity that defines you more publicly as well as guides how your personal relationship works in areas like how much time you spend together and what you do with that time. I’ll support you in creating a relationship ethos that helps you identify your priorities, make decisions, and live with purpose.